North Dakota Newspaper Coverage of Americans With
Disabilities and Ethnic Minorities

Abstract

This study examines how editors' perspectives on coverage
of ethnic minorities and Americans with disabilities are shaped by
the nature of their communities. Findings indicate that editors
from more pluralistic communities place higher value on news about
ethnic and other minorities, and a lower value on stories about
Americans with disabilities. Local newspapers appear to be more
responsive to the majority groups' interests than those of the
excluded groups.

Among the small communities in North Dakota, change is the norm.
Many small North Dakota communities, particularly those communities
that are economically dependent upon agriculture, are adjusting to
declining populations, aging residents, and the increasing
consolidation of local services such as schools, health care and
retail into regional centers (Rathge & Highman, 1998). However,
the most significant changes affecting small communities are often
those changes that are imposed by large-scale bureaucratic groups
headquartered outside the community (Warren, 1978). Civil rights
legislation in the 1960s, and Americans with Disabilities Act
legislation of 1990 required local schools and businesses to comply
with national standards. Both types of civil rights legislation were
bureaucratic attempts at adjustment to nation-wide changes that
required state and local compliance, regardless of local
conditions.

Local newspapers are often considered to be an important tool for
community adjustment to social conflict and social change (Tichenor,
Donohue, & Olien, 1980). However, the way in which a local
newspaper reports community conflict and community change has been
shown to be related to the nature of the community itself. Newspapers
in smaller communities tend to contain fewer reports of conflict than
do newspapers in larger communities. The conflicts that do appear in
the small-town newspapers tend to involve disputes between a unified
local community and an outside enemy such as a state or federal
agency (Olien, Donohue & Tichenor, 1968; Hindman, 1996).

This is a study of community influences on the perspectives of
local newspaper editors. The question being raised here is to what
extent does the nature of the community affect local newspaper
editors' coverage of news about ethnic and other minority groups such
as Americans with disabilities? This study is grounded in the
observation that local newspapers tend to serve supporting roles in
the community, often reinforcing the power and authority of local
elites (Donohue, Tichenor, Olien, 1973). In larger, more diverse
communities, there is a more complex structure of leadership and
power. A local newspaper in a large community likely has more news
sources to choose from, each of which might have conflicting views.
Because local newspapers are interdependent with the dominant
institutions both within and beyond the community, variation in
community diversity, or community structural pluralism, is expected
to be related to variation in editor perspectives. Structural
pluralism is defined as the degree of social differentiation and
complexity among occupational and organizational groups within the
community and as leading to potential diversity in the local power
structure (Tichenor, Donohue, & Olien, 1980, p. 16).

Communities and Non-local Influence

Small, rural communities are increasingly affected by the
decisions of large-scale bureaucratic groups located outside of the
community (Donohue, Tichenor, & Olien, 1985). State-level
governments often provide incentives for local schools and
governmental services to consolidate into larger-scale operations
that serve wider areas (Martindale & Hansen, 1969). A multitude
of local retail businesses have been replaced by national discount
retailers such as Wal-Mart (Flora & Johnson, 1991, p. 49). The
decline of small-scale agriculture is, in part, the result of federal
and state programs supporting large-scale, capital intensive
production agriculture (Hightower & DeMarco, 1973).

Although many outside-imposed changes on small, rural communities
result in a decline in status for individuals or groups, other
changes are designed to raise the status of specific groups within
the community. The imposition of national standards based on the
civil rights of minorities and Americans with disabilities attempts
to ameliorate injustices by providing a legal means of raising
challenges against acts of discrimination.

As with any system-wide attempt at change, some communities find
it easier to adjust than others. Smaller communities with lower
levels of social and economic diversity may find national standards
to be particularly burdensome when the mandates are not accompanied
with funding. Local citizens and leaders in homogenous communities
with small populations of ethnic and other minorities may question
the necessity of local enactment of civil rights legislation, and
local newspaper editors may similarly question the need for coverage
of an issue that does not, on the surface, appear to affect their
communities. However, in these types of communities, persons of color
or disability may be more likely to be excluded or oppressed, so the
need for such coverage is potentially greater.

Ethnic and Minority Groups in Rural and Urban
Communities

An increasing number of small agricultural communities in the
United States are adjusting to growing immigrant populations settled
in the community by non-locally controlled agricultural processing
firms. Local schools and social services are then required to meet
the needs of an increasingly diverse clientele (Farmer, 1997). Local
newspapers would be expected to cover local officials' attempts to
adjust to the changing community population, given the newspapers'
traditional reliance on official sources. However, the majority of
small, rural communities are not dealing with an influx of ethnic
minorities, but instead are facing the problems resulting from a
declining population, and economic stagnation. Thus, the need for
newspaper coverage of ethnic minorities is expected to be greatest in
larger, more diverse communities. In more pluralistic communities,
ethnic and other minorities are likely to be more visible and more
vocal in expressing their concerns.

Because there are more formal mechanisms for raising challenges
and airing grievances in more pluralistic communities, such as public
hearings, labor unions, and organized interest groups, local
newspapers in these communities are more likely to cover stories
providing information about minority issues, particularly when
conflict or debate is involved. However, there is great variation in
the extent to which newspapers recognize various groups, and that
variation may be related the degree to which the group is
organized.

Diversity and Cohesion of Minority Groups

Americans with disabilities have not achieved the same degree of
cohesion as other excluded groups (Scotch, 1988, p. 159-161). Part of
the reason for the lack of organization among Americans with
disabilities is the diversity of physical and psychological
manifestations of disability (Fine & Asch, 1988, p. 6). Another
barrier to organization as a social movement is the social and
political isolation of persons with disabilities (Scotch, 1988, p.
161).

Regardless of whether or not any one individual sees him or
herself as having a disability, chances are good that their options
in life are limited in systematic ways as a result of socially
constructed barriers such as discrimination and lack of physical
access (Fine & Asch, 1988, p. 14). Fine and Asch (1988, p. 6-7)
argue that persons with disabilities are best conceptualized as a
minority group. However, news media are not likely to include the
comments of any group that does not provide a steady, reliable source
of news, or that does not have a clearly identified spokesperson who
can speak for the membership of the group.

Traditionally-defined ethnic minority groups such as Native
Americans, African-Americans, and Latino/Hispanics are also more
diverse than their social labels would indicate. There is great
variance in the degree to which individual members of a minority
group identify with their ethnic roots. As was the case with
Americans with disabilities, however, discrimination and oppression
are the result of social labels that limit all members of a group in
spite of their individual differences. News media are often part of
the process by which minority groups are labeled as deviant and are
given unfavorable or superficial news coverage (Martindale, 1989).
However, the amount of news coverage, regardless of is quality, and
regardless of how favorable or superficial it appears, would be
related to the nature of the minority group and the nature of the
community. Local newspapers depend for their news primarily upon
purposive sources, such as spokespersons for agencies and groups.
Thus, a local group may receive coverage because of its degree of
power or organization within the community, or because the group is
the focus of non-locally imposed rules or regulations.

Coverage of Americans with Disabilities and Other Minority
Groups

Americans with disabilities would rank among the largest minority
groups in the country. As many as 33.8 million people of all ages
living in households had some limitation of activity in 1990, or 13.7
percent of the household population (LaPlante, 1993, p. 3). However,
persons with disabilities tend to be stigmatized as being different
or strange (Fine & Asch, 1988, p. 16). Media portrayals and
insensitive use of language by journalists may contribute to that
perception. Smith (1991) argues that newspaper coverage often uses
language insensitively by referring to Americans with disabilities as
"handicapped." Similarly, newspapers tend to run feature stories
instead of covering current issues affecting persons with
disabilities. (p. 10).

Clogston (1990) found newspapers tended to apply a "traditional
model" to discussion of disabilities rather than a "civil rights" or
"progressive model." The "traditional model" presents people with
disabilities as medically or economically defective, reinforcing
notions of powerlessness and incompleteness.

Haller (1996, pp. 14-16) found that the dominant frame for media
coverage of Americans with disabilities changed after the ADA was
passed in 1990. Governmental groups were more closely connected with
stories about the Americans with Disabilities Act than were
disability groups, and stories citing business groups tended to focus
on costs associated with passage of the act. Rather than
investigating the impact and enforcement of the ADA, mass media
tended to frame the story as one of a hardship placed on businesses
and local communities (Haller, 1996, pp. 18-19).

Negative mass media treatment of ethnic minorities or of Americans
with disabilities is consistent with media treatment of all groups
defined, by the non-excluded groups, as deviant (Shoemaker, 1985, p.
12; Hertog and McLeod, 1995).

Contrary to expectations, however, Fedler (1973, p. 117) showed
that minority groups enjoyed far greater access to print and
broadcast media than established groups. As would be expected based
on Shoemaker's (1985) "deviance" hypothesis, Fedler (1973, p. 117)
showed that the type of coverage minority groups received was less
favorable than that of more established groups.

Greenberg, Burgoon, Burgoon, and Korzenny (1983, p. 65) found that
Mexican-American community leaders said media coverage was more
critical of Mexican-American teens than of Anglo teens. The leaders
also criticized media for emphasizing negative rather than positive
news about Mexican Americans, and criticized media for being
unsupportive of the leaders' attempts at strengthening the community.
Hispanic readers were more satisfied with media functioning than were
Anglo readers (Greenberg, Burgoon, Burgoon, and Korzenny, 1983, p.
117). In an analysis of six metropolitan daily newspapers' coverage
of Hispanic-Americans, the authors found that Hispanic sources were
regularly used in stories. They also found the papers consistently
included a variety of stories about Hispanic Americans (Greenberg,
Burgoon, Burgoon, and Korzenny, 1983, p. 220).

The disparity between Hispanic community leaders and the rest of
the communities in the Greenberg, et al.'s (1983) study may simply be
evidence of the diversity that characterizes the Hispanic population.
There is no reason to expect that all members of an ethnic group
would view news coverage or any other local issue in exactly the same
way. The diversity of perspectives among a group of Mexican American
respondents was the subject of Lewels' (1981) study in which he found
five distinct perspectives regarding Mexican American attitudes
toward the mass media, but also found that all Hispanic respondents
did not trust mass media, big business or government.

The current study differs from previous studies of media treatment
of ethnic minorities and Americans with disabilities. Rather than
focusing on content of newspapers in ethnically diverse communities,
this study uses a wide range of communities from an ethnically
homogenous state--North Dakota. Rather than focusing on newspaper
content, community leader perceptions or audience perceptions, this
study focuses on the perspectives of local media gatekeepers.

Editors and Community Structural Pluralism

Editor perceptions of ethnic groups and other minorities have been
shown to be systematically related to the structural pluralism of the
community. Editors from more structurally pluralistic communities
were more likely to consider members of ethnic minorities as members
of the local power structure, were more likely to consider one or
more members of an ethnic minority as among their most important
sources, and were more likely to consider as important news about
ethnic and other minority groups than were newspaper editors from
smaller, more homogenous communities (Hindman, Littlefield, Preston,
& Neumann, 1996).

In spite of the increasing educational levels of newspaper editors
which tends to minimize community-based differences (Weaver &
Wilhoit, 1986), editor orientations have been shown to be related to
community structural pluralism on a number of dimensions. Editors
from less pluralistic communities are more likely to describe
community boosterism and identity-building as among the main things
their newspapers do for the community (Hindman, 1996). Editors from
less pluralistic communities are more likely to emphasize local news
over state, national, and international news about business and
education (Donohue, Olien, Tichenor, & Hindman, 1993).

The local editor serves as a gatekeeper in determining what kinds
of stories are published, but is also constrained by both
professional standards and community standards. Generally speaking,
the local editor is responsive to the degree to which local groups,
particularly socially legitimized groups, are organized.

Given the above discussion, the first hypothesis was stated
as:

H1. Newspaper editors from more pluralistic communities will
consider news about ethnic and other minority groups to be more
important than will editors from less pluralistic communities.

Editors are expected to place importance on news about ethnic and
other minorities in response to the greater ethnic diversity in more
pluralistic communities. In more pluralistic communities, members of
the local power structure are more likely to be concerned with
minority issues, if only in order to comply with federal laws
regarding equal employment opportunities. Editors in more
structurally pluralistic communities may also place importance on
news about ethnic and other minorities because one or more groups has
achieved critical mass and has established itself as among the local
power structure. This is expected because ethnic minority groups have
a better chance of being represented among the local community power
structure in the more structurally pluralistic community.

The second hypothesis is related to the first, but instead is
based on the specific types of groups that are included in
stories:

H2. Newspaper editors from more pluralistic communities will be
more likely to cover stories about ethnic minorities than will
editors from less pluralistic communities.

Larger minority populations in more pluralistic communities make
stories about ethnic minorities more likely to emerge from this type
of community. Sources representing ethnic minority groups are more
likely found in the more pluralistic community which also will likely
have a more diverse power structure. A very different relationship is
expected for editor perceptions about Americans with
disabilities:

H3. Newspaper editors from more pluralistic communities will be
less likely to cover stories about Americans with disabilities than
will editors from less pluralistic communities.

The passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act placed this
story on the agenda of local newspapers, particularly those in less
pluralistic communities. Editors in small, homogenous communities are
sensitive to the concerns of local business and governmental leaders
who had to struggle to comply with the "unfunded mandates" contained
within the ADA. Less pluralistic communities tend to receive a larger
proportion of their local funding from nonlocal sources, and are in
turn more dominated by outside agencies than are the economically
diverse regional and metropolitan centers.

Local news coverage can be expected to be responsive to the
concerns of local businesses and local governments who must work out
the implications of these externally imposed mandates. Community
leaders in smaller, more homogenous communities tend to use conflict
with nonlocal groups such as the federal government in order to
reinforce populist traditions and to enhance local solidarity.

In addition, rural, less pluralistic communities tend to have
higher concentrations of elderly who are more likely to have
disabilities than the rest of the population. Editors may cover more
news about this group simply because of the visible presence of
persons with disabilities within the community.

Methods

Data for the study came from a 1996 telephone survey of a
purposive sample of 52 North Dakota newspaper editors from one
newspaper per county throughout the state. The sample includes the
main newspapers from each county in the state and represents a
diversity of community types. Three interviewers trained for the
project called the editors after the editors had received an
introductory letter. The sample includes editors of weekly and daily
general circulation newspapers in North Dakota.

Independent Variable

The independent variable was community structural pluralism,
defined as the degree of specialization and differentiation within
the community. Operationally, it is defined as the additive index
comprised of standardized measures of city and county population,
number of residents with a B. S. or higher education level, and
percent of the work force in non-agricultural, forestry, and fishery
occupations. Indicators of pluralism were derived from the 1990 U.S.
Census. The Chronbach's alpha reliability of the index was .89.
Chronbach's alpha reliability coefficients greater than .80 are
considered to have an acceptable level of internal consistency. In
other words, the individual items making up the pluralism index
appear to be related. Community and county population are measures
which can indicate the potential of the region to support a greater
degree of division of labor and more complex organizations, which can
be expected to lead to an increase in formalization of social
interaction. The work force measure is an indicator of the degree to
which the community has diversified the local economy beyond a basic
dependence on agriculture. The education measure, when combined with
the other measures, is expected to indicate the potential for
development of social power among diverse groups within the
community. The variable was dichotomized so that the groups would
represent more and less structurally pluralistic communities by
ranking communities on the index, and then dividing the sample into
two equal groups.

Dependent Variables

Editors were first asked a series of questions regarding the
importance the editor places on various types of news from various
levels, ranging from local to the national and international level.
Specifically, editors were asked:

"How important is it for you to carry stories or editorials about
ethnic and minority groups, such as African Americans, Native
Americans, Latino/Hispanics, Asian Americans, or Americans with
disabilities."

Respondents indicated importance on a ten point scale with one
representing "no importance" and ten representing "extremely
important" for each of five levels: local, county, neighboring
counties, state, and national and international levels.

Editors were then asked an open-ended question which was stated
as:

"What kinds of stories and editorials does your newspaper tend to
publish about ethnic groups and other minorities?"

The responses to the open-ended question were probed by asking,
"Any other cultural or ethnic groups." Responses to the open-ended
item were coded as to the type of group mentioned in one or more of
the stories, including: African American, Native American,
Latino/Hispanic, Asian American, Americans with disability, and Other
(Including Norwegians and Germans from Russia).

Two individuals coded each answer and compared findings. Percent
agreement between the coders was 92%.

Results

The first hypothesis was stated as:

H1. Newspaper editors from more pluralistic communities will
consider news about ethnic and other minority groups to be more
important than will editors from less pluralistic communities.

As expected, there were lower levels of importance placed on news
about ethnic and other minority groups by editors from less
pluralistic communities, although differences at local and county
levels were not statistically significant. The differences were
greatest at the levels most distant from the community which reflects
the local orientation of residents of smaller communities, and also
reflects the tendency of small town newspapers to specialize in local
news and events. When the ratings were summed into an index, the
overall means were significantly different, and in the hypothesized
direction.

The second hypothesis was stated as:

H2. Newspaper editors from more pluralistic communities will be
more likely to cover stories about ethnic minorities than will
editors from less pluralistic communities.

The two main groups of ethnic minorities mentioned by editors were
Native Americans and Latino/Hispanics. As expected, a significantly
larger proportion of editors from more pluralistic communities were
likely to mention stories about Native Americans. The proportions for
Latino/Hispanics were in the expected direction, but were not
statistically significant. Over four times as many editors mentioned
Latino/Hispanics in more versus less pluralistic communities (19.2%
versus 3.8%). Thus, this hypothesis received mixed support.

The last hypothesis was stated as:

H3. Newspaper editors from more pluralistic communities will be
less likely to cover stories about Americans with disabilities than
will editors from less pluralistic communities.

Nearly three times the proportion of editors from less pluralistic
communities mentioned stories about Americans with disabilities when
asked what kinds of stories and editorials the newspaper publishes.
This is consistent with the idea that residents of less pluralistic
communities are more vulnerable to the influence of external agencies
than are residents of more pluralistic communities. Editors of
small-town newspapers devote a greater proportion of local coverage
to the local impact of non-local mandates, particularly when local
leaders are resistant or when the community has difficulty with
adjustment (Hindman, 1996).

Editors' Descriptions of Coverage

By examining the comments of the editors, it appeared that most
recalled stories were features as opposed to routine news. For
example, a weekly newspaper editor contrasted his coverage with that
of a daily:

[We cover] cultural stories. [The]
dailies emphasize bad things. My tendency is to emphasize cultural
items--pow wows, historical aspects. I want to find out what
people say. [We] had a woman who adopted a Black
child--did a story. [We] did stories about a sacred
site--learned native name for places.

A daily editor described his paper's emphasis on culturally
sensitive coverage:

The migrant laborers in some communities are the subject of
feature stories, as indicated by the following editors, both from
more pluralistic communities:

[We write] educational stories about migrant
population.

[We write] stories on migrant farm workers. [We do
an ] occasional feature on individuals and stories on migrant
school. In summer [we] try to do stories that will be of
interest to Hispanic migrant workers.

Other editors from pluralistic communities tended to reflect the
concerns of non-excluded groups:

[We have a] large Native American community
nearby... [We] try to stress positive news--discuss
gambling issue as Indian gaming grows. [We write]
editorials about alcoholism and Native Americans.

[We cover a] lot of legal news about Indian affairs out
of the legal court system.

Based on editor comments, it appears the relationship between
structural pluralism and inclusion of stories about ethnic minorities
stems from a combination of service to the local ethnic minority
group and service to members of majority groups. Minority groups may
need coverage to feel included in the community. Newspaper coverage
of minority groups may also serve "surveillance" functions for
majority groups who seek to monitor their environments, observe
social changes within the community, and, perhaps reinforce their
concerns about the growing status and visibility of minority groups
in the community (Wright, 1986).

One of the main assumptions of this study was that communities
tend to report issues that are sources of difficulty or conflict. It
was expected that smaller, more ethnically homogenous communities
would be more likely to experience difficulty in adjusting to the
Americans with Disability Act. An examination of editor's responses
does not reveal that the communities had any difficulty adjusting,
however. An editor from one of the less pluralistic communities
mentioned Americans with disabilities in the context of local
response to non-local mandates:

It can be argued that these types of stories tend to serve
majority groups who may be reassured by the idea that disability is
an individual problem that can be overcome through sufficient
personal effort. The perspective which seems to underlie the type of
coverage recalled by the editors in this study is at odds with the
underlying idea of the Americans with Disabilities Act. The ADA
suggests that "disability" is in a large part, socially imposed
through the creation of physical barriers (Fine & Asch, 1988, p.
16). When Americans with disabilities are portrayed as heroic
individuals who are "overcoming disabilities" and achieving goals,
local media tend to reinforce the stigma associated with disability.
Similarly, Wilson and Gutierrez (1995, pp. 152-158) argue that
coverage of ethnic minority groups achieves the most advanced levels
when nonwhites are reflected in all types of news, not just in
features stories or crime stories.

It would appear that there are significant differences in the way
editors from different types of communities report stories about
ethnic and other minorities. However, all newspaper coverage appeared
to fall short of Wilson and Gutierrez' (1995) standard in which
minority status is treated as being incidental to the story. Local
newspapers vary in the way that different types of minority groups
are covered, but in all cases, tend to most closely reflect the
interests and concerns of powerful, non-excluded groups within the
community.

Summary

This study has examined community influences on local newspaper
editors' perspectives on coverage of groups affected by non-local
mandates such as the 1960s civil rights legislation and the 1990
Americans with Disability Act. Editors from more pluralistic
communities were shown to place higher value on news about ethnic
groups and other minorities. A greater proportion of editors from
more pluralistic communities could recall including stories or
editorials about ethnic minorities, but a smaller proportion of
editors from more pluralistic communities could recall including
stories about Americans with disabilities. The greater coverage of
Americans with disabilities in smaller, less pluralistic communities
can be explained by observing that these types of communities are
increasingly comprised of elderly residents who are more likely to
have disabilities. However, an examination of the types of stories
mentioned by the editors leads to the conclusion that the coverage is
more likely to serve the majority population than persons with
disabilities. The stories focus on the local enactment of the ADA
mandates, or are feature stories about individuals who have triumphed
over their disabilities. In either case, the local newspapers appear
to be more responsive to the majority groups' interest in ethnic
groups and other minorities rather than being responsive to the
interests of the excluded groups.

Martindale, D. and Hanson, G. (1980). Small town and the nation:
The conflict of local and translocal forces. Westport Connecticut:
Greenwood.

Rathge, R. and Highman, P. (1998). Population change in the Great
Plains: A history of prolonged decline. Rural Development
Perspectives, 13, 19-26.

Olien, C., Donohue, G., and Tichenor, P. (1968). Community
editor's power and the reporting of conflict. Journalism Quarterly,
47, 472-78.

Scotch, R. (1988). Disability as the basis for a social movement:
Advocacy and the politics of definition. Journal of Social Issues,
44, 159-172.

Sheppard, L. (1991). Advice from the inside: Improving tribal news
coverage. In Tim Giago (Ed.) The American Indian and the media (pp.
13-15). Minneapolis: National Conference of Christians and Jews,
Minnesota-Dakotas Region.